Hey Steemit! Hope you are doing just fine!

As you know I'm the new guy!
I recently registered myself on Steemit. I think it was the 16th of July when I made my first post or something similar. I know it's only been a year, but I couldn't take the uncomfortable embarrassment anymore. You know, the feeling when you sit in a table and everyone around is having a good time although you don't really know who they are. As if something is missing :P

Why not sooner?

Maybe it's just me, but 1 year seems to be just enough time make up my mind. I really didn't want to make a fool of myself so I listened carefully for a year and participated in the conversation from time to time. Now I know you are a legit friend that can be trusted and I'm ready to formally introduce myself, Steemit.

"Hey, let me get you a beer!"

So, I'm Sulev! Nice to finally finally meet you, again!

I'm 26 now. Can't believe it's already been a year. When I joined I was 25 obviously. A quarter of a century old! I liked the sound of that. It made me feel a little bit more important you know. I had high hopes for that year, but as always nothing much happened. Though I am thankful I met you! It's been a blast being in your company for all that time.

gulp*

My life

has been quite extraordinarily ordinary. I went to school at the age of 7 and came out the other end at the age of 24. In my early years I was apart of a folkdance group in my school. Yeah...Estonians have weird obsession with folk dance and singing. Singing and dancing with 50 000+ people isn't something anyone thinks of when you are invited to a folk dance and song concert :P

Here, I'll show you on my phone:

gulp*

Last time I attended as a performer was 17 years ago. You could say it wasn't my cup of tea. No, I thought it would be better to spend my time doing nothing like that. Actually I didn't even think about how I SHOULD spend my time I merely let my emotions guide me and they guided me in front of the computer from an early age on. I think you can already guess I wasn't the next Gates. I ended up spending most of my free time playing games which I enjoyed far too much.

Games like this:

_{it's Diablo II!!}

It's kinda hard making up my mind if it was good or not or does it even matter... depends what the goal of our life is. If it's simply happiness, I was 100% happy playing games. But the things that make me happy have changed and so did gaming lose it's importance to me over time. Looking at it from my current point of view it was a major waste of time. I think the bottom lines is, we live in an ever changing present that we cannot keep comparing to the past. Might just accept what, where, how and who I am right now. We all want to do great things, but that's an illusion. I'll do nothing "big" in my life and I don't need to succeed in everything to live my life. Life simply is. So ,whatever.

I wanna listen to some music...

I'm sorry, got a little carried away there.

gulp*

In the following years I somehow managed to learn the guitar between all the video games. I even played two times in school. Learning to play is tough and I'll never really master it, that much is certain. It's more of a meditating thing for me. I enjoy playing by myself. Maybe I'll record something in the future, but it always seems too taunting of a task. Right now I rarely play, because I try to keep myself busy with other, more important stuff.

In school things weren't that great. My class had pretty bad dynamics, everyone had their own small group. By the end of it I ended up having basically 5 friends from school from which I only talk to 1 now.

Friends come and friends go.

gulp*

Because I didn't bother figuring out what I liked doing, what would I be doing after high school, I ended up going into college and studying civil and industrial engineering.

Oh boy, what a waste that was :D

Ironically, when I was asked in the first grade who I wanted to be when I grew up I didn't know and simply responded "a construction builder". Yeah, after 12 years I made the same choice.
I ended up finishing college with a "4" which is a "B". The grade for my final master thesis.

Congratulations! I'm a jobless engineer with a masters degree that doesn't even like the field.

gulp*

Right in the middle of college I also had to do 11 months of military service.
I was assigned to be a driver for the central command station which meant I could drive a lot while other men were in the back of my truck freezing they butts off every time we drove around. I didn't complain :)
But of course I had to do about 90% the same things as everyone else. It was a really fun time. The situation in the army was so bad that simply thinking about it made people laugh out loud. There were a hundred different totally pointless rules that we had to follow that made our days a bliss. Cleaning took a whole new meaning in the army. What I consider clean now would constitute as "are you fucking kidding me? Even my dog isn't that dirty!" in the army.

Omg!

And all my pictures from the past 3 years are gone! I recently installed Windows 7 again and went from 1HDD to a SSD+2HDD setup. I accidentally lost all my phone pictures in the process. Ouch! Luckily I have some photos online. I am trying to see what a recovery program can recover right now.

Well, here are some pictures that I've uploaded online.

_{Typical service. You just sit around doing nothing 99% of the time.}

_{Living in a tent is like a tropical vacation.}

_{The ceiling is a lightshow.}

_{And the air thick with dust.}

_{That one time I received a reward.}

But enough of that!

gulp
gulp
"Two beers please!"

After my military service I went back to school... only to find out I didn't like it at all.

So I had to try new things.

I did some reverse graffiti for some time:

It was fun, but time consuming. And there was a general lack of canvas :)
So I stopped doing it.

Then I tried some acting.

I acted in two plays.
And two plays were enough for me to say "that's not for me" :P

Then I thought "fine, how about organizing events?".

And I joined a volunteer group that organized all kinds of events in my town. After eight months of participating I concluded again "It's not for me".

Aaand then I went to the United States of America, Hawaii, Oahu for 3 months.

I worked as a grillmaster and runner to pay for my stay. I traveled around the island and relaxed as much as I could, even though I was living with 10 people in an apartment and we were kicked out in the end. I even got a taste of being homeless for a few days :D
What a vacation, a full package!

gulp*

Looking back at all those things I have come to realized a few things. A vacation doesn't mean distant places, sandy beaches and sleeping all day. It means finding new things to do. I'll never find satisfaction from simply leisure and I'll end up feeling more burned out by the end of a vacation like that.

Doesn't matter where I go or what I do, I'll still end up feeling unsatisfied, if my mind isn't working with me. So, sometimes it's better to take a look into your mind rather than travel or find new activities.

I'll never know until I haven't tried.

gulp*

And then I met you!

...on facebook.

I was blown away how you handed out money to random Africans, 15 000$ for a short introduction post for example. I bet you don't remember me walking in the door. I didn't say a word at first. After a few days I did speak, but hardly anyone was listening and so it went on for at least 2 months. An silent echo in the far reaches of the blockchain bar.
As I told earlier I didn't want to introduce myself too early. I wanted to get to know you better.

It was obvious you liked sexy girls talking about steem, cannabis and crypto

I didn't stand a chance. I'm not a girl, I don't know about crypto and I didn't have interesting cannabis-knowledge to share. But I also realized you only liked those things about a few people. At times the whole room was filled with "steemit howto", "steemit", "crypto" etc... but only established names got your attention. I wondered, would it make sense to research those topics and make a post about it? Yes, I imagined and ended up with a short, but to the point article about cryptocurrencies. It made about 10 cents.

I felt my time was a bit wasted. So I took a more lighthearted approach and behold... my income stayed the same, around 0.

It's as if you were ignoring me and that hurt a lot, but I got over it. I continued posting about things I wanted to and pretty soon a great whale gave an 150$ upvote. "Wow! My days of darkness are over!" I thought, but as suddenly as that whale named "dan" came, he disappeared.

"No matter." I carried on.

I took up photography. Something new and exciting I had wanted to try for a long time. And so my photographic adventure on Steemit began. It seems you noticed a few shots here and there, but mostly my work was neglected. I've never held that against you, because in the end neither to I care about everything that you seem to be interested in.
Lifestyle, sports, betting, gambling, fiction, writing, poetry? No, thanks. I prefer the arts, popular science and philosophy. Something that rarely peaques your interest. And if it does, it's mostly by the same old friends of yours... not that their works is flatout bad, but you know, there are a lot better fish in the sea that go unnoticed by you daily.

But I get it: You, Steemit, are not about quality

You are not about quantity either. Nor about originality.

I used to think you are purely about popularity, an attention economy, but that's not the case either.

So I'm left myself asking "What are you all about"?

Don't answer.

gulp*

You seem to be interested in your friends first I reckon. I rarely, if ever, see your friends with an empty jug. (I am happy your friends are decent for the most part)

Secondly of course you seem to favor those that have a lot of steem. Why is that? Why should a large wallet be more attractive to you? While rich people usually do tend to be more productive and smart, this is not the case here. I think most of those big wallets here are simple miner peasants that struck gold. I wouldn't indulge them so much.

Thirdly of course quality content and popularity play a part in who you like. Attractive people that work hard are far more likely to get into your view.

Fourth it's your own taste. This is totally personal. You seem to like some content from random people and then a vast majority might get unnoticed although they have good stories to tell in their own right. It's sad really.

Here's what I propose we do:

Let's power up reputation

Think about it. There are people here in this bar that have been here for over a year and they have been doing their thing for a long time. They produce content every day. It might not be something you enjoy, but at their table they enjoy what they do very much and come back every day for more. Is it fair that their jugs are empty half the time? How much more will they last? They might end up finding a better pub you know.

So, I'm suggesting we give their reputation some weight when it comes to spreading the barrels of beer that roll into town every day. Right now it seems someone with a high reputation has as much impact as someone who just walked in. It sounds good, but it actually isn't. (i'll give 5SBD to the first one who writes steembeer as a comment) Does sticking with you really count for nothing? Will you really trust a newcomer more than someone who has been with you from the start? I'd award those people. They deserve a discount at least!

The sad thing is...

...even as I am talking to you, you don't listen. And I'm OK with that. It's not my bar, you tend to your visitors as you see fit. I'm just happy to be allowed in here and get a few drops of free beer every now and then while some bathe in it.

Right now I'm still learning...

...about Photography. I aim to become a photographer.
Selling stock photos hasn't really pan out at all. In the coming months I'll try to get involved with shooting people and trying to actually sell my services.

Anyway. Bottoms up!

gulpgulpgulp
I see you haven't even touched the two beers I bought you. Well, I'll just drink them too if you don't mind.
gulpgulpgulp
gulpgulpgulp
gulpgulpgulp

So long! See you when I see you, tiger!
Call me!

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You can find me on:

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Upvote, comment, resteem and follow if you like! Have a great day!